


Age and friendship

by julidoesnotwrites (notjuli)



Series: Trektober 2020 [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: #Trektober2020, Age Difference, Friendship, Gen, Internal Monologue, No Romance, Trektober, Trektober 2020, but its strictly platonic, wesley is a child ffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26899918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjuli/pseuds/julidoesnotwrites
Summary: Strictly platonic, non romantic and non sexual, reflection of Geordi's friendship with Wes.Trektober 2020, day 9, prompt "age difference".
Relationships: Geordi La Forge & Wesley Crusher
Series: Trektober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937494
Kudos: 5
Collections: Trektober 2020





	Age and friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Wes and Geordi's ages/age difference from Memory Alpha.
> 
> Also, if the characterization is wonky its bc I've only watched the first 12 eps of s1 of TNG lol.

Being friends with someone much younger than him was something of a new experience for Geordi. He was never someone who had lots of friends, but the ones he had were always around his age, two or three years older or younger, but not much more than that. There was, now, an exception.

Wesley Crusher was his friend. And Wesley Crusher was thirteen years younger than him.

When Wesley had been born Geordi was entering his adolescence. Wes was now entering his adolescence and Geordi was nearing thirty.

It wasn't hard to forget that Wes was still a kid, what with him being a genius and always around adults rather than people his age, and with him  _ working _ around the Enterprise, on the bridge and engineering and all.

And Geordi had never been great with people in general, regardless of age, and being friends with someone so much younger now presented him with new difficulties. Because regardless of how mature and well-adjusted Wes is, he's still a kid, and Geordi, as an adult, has a responsibility over him. Has the responsibility to remember that Wes is a child, and that there were things that no child should know, hear, see or do. Mostly because there were things no person should know, hear, see or do, much less children. There sure were things Geordi wished he himself didn't know, hadn't heard, seen or done.

And Geordi didn't really know how one was supposed to talk to kids, no matter that Wes was closer to an adult than a kid. He figured that treating everyone like an intelligent person, listening and respecting boundaries was a good guideline to interact with anyone, kid and adults alike, so that's what he did.

He had a conversation on the topic with Doctor Crusher, once. Both because she was Wesley's mother and because she was probably the most equipped person on the ship to have that discussion. She agreed that the 'treating him like a person and listening' strategy was probably the best thing that there was. That had helped calm his anxiety about the whole thing for a bit, but sometimes he couldn't but overthink everything a bit.

On days like that, when he worried about how his friendship with Wes affected him (Wesley), there wasn't much that could pull him out of it. But seeing Wes run into engineering, hands full and all but tripping on his own feet, seeing him break into a smile when Wes finally spotted him, the "Geordi!" and excited rambling that followed, that sure did help.

With an amused smile Geordi pulled out a chair for Wes and focused on the words coming out of the boy, allowing his mind to finally stop worrying so much, and instead he allowed himself to enjoy the moment, the interesting conversation and the ideas shared.

He was glad to have Wesley Crusher as a friend, no matter how old either of them were.

**Author's Note:**

> while tagging this fic i discovered that there are way too fucking many Wes/adults pre-existing tags and literally only five Wes & other people tags, so now im going to actively ignore and try to forget that for the rest of my life
> 
> thanks for reading. i'm on tumblr [@thisisnotjuli](https://thisisnotjuli.tumblr.com) on my personal blog and [@fanishjuli](https://fanishjuli.tumblr.com) on my fandoms blog.


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